Book info

• Title Magic for Beginners
• Author Kelly Link
• Year 2005
• Genre Short Stories

In this dazzling collection, prize-winning short story writer Kelly Link takes the ordinary and makes it strange – and the strange and makes it ordinary. Engaging, funny, eerie and magical, these nine stories prove Link to be an original and important talent. Of all the books you read this year, this will be the one that you remember. Taking themes from horror and fantasy, these stories transform them into the stuff of delicate lyrical fantasy, with a distinctive and effervescent blend of humour and pathos.

Thoughts

I didn’t realise this was a book of short stories until the first one came to an abrupt end. Unfortunately, the first one was the best one, and I spent most of the rest of the book wishing that it could have continued, so that we could find out what happened with the grandmother and the missing boyfriend and the magic handbag.

This was a book of imagination, flights of fancy that were both full of whimsy and yet tailored to a darker audience. There’s plenty of blood and gore, violence and zombies, and yet equally a lot of talk of bunnies and pyjamas and cats and kids. It’s all quite odd, so that you have to just go with it.

I can’t work out whether I actually enjoyed this or not. It was an experience, and I’m glad that I read it, but I still do wish there had been more of the first story.

Rating: 3 / 5